Cross-lagged relations among linguistic skills in european Portuguese: A longitudinal study

Research has widely demonstrated the contribution of word reading, listening comprehension skills, and oral reading fluency to reading comprehension performance. However, the existence of reciprocal relations among these skills has been investigated less frequently. The authors examined the directionality of the relations among reading comprehension, listening comprehension, word reading, and oral reading fluency in Portuguese elementary school students from second to fourth grade by using a longitudinal cross-lagged design. The sample was composed of 261 students assessed at the end of grades 2, 3, and 4. The results indicated that there is a reciprocal relation between listening comprehension and reading comprehension in every grade and that oral reading fluency and reading comprehension have a reciprocal relation only in the initial years of schooling, similar to the observed relation between oral reading fluency and word reading. The results are discussed considering their potential impact and the limitations of the study.This study was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre at the University of Minho and supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Education and Science through national funds and, when applicable, cofinanced by the European Regional Development Fund under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement with the Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013) and the Research Centre on Child Studies (UID/CED/00317/2013) through the Competitiveness and Internationalization Operational Program (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER007562). Sandra Santos’s work was also supported by a grant (SFRH/BD/94763/2013) from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology